The Coming of the Snow
Here, of course, the Cockney sentimentalist again emerges in this column, for what townsman, even though he may have been self-exiled in the country for over a quarter of a century, is not inclined to Christmas-card ecstasy when he sees virgin snow blanketing the countryside? The ecstasy soon sublimates, leaving him only too much an inhabitant of his tedious body, when he turns to a job of out-door work, or tries to back his car out of the garage. And there is also the matter of postal arrange- ments, with London, Paris and New York brought to a standstill by being cut off from his little hamlet.
Meanwhile, I can enjoy the spectacle, with its deathly monotony gradually revealing subtleties of pastel shades, ranging through a ghostly spectrum in every boot-mark, and offering lace patterns made by the claws of birds and feline pads. The great holly-tree in my roadside hedge is sugared heavily, and now that a breeze is springing up little castings of snow-dust float out here and there from the slippery leaves and shudder down in front of the trunk like a shiver running along one's spine. "That little hunchback in the snow," as W. H. Davies called the robin, is to the fore, attending to some soaked dog-biscuits which the Corgi has scorned. (I stare at all this from the window, and hesitate to go out.)
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